Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Someone Will Challenge Waxman (?)

From the moment that I learned that Congressman Henry Waxman was seeking the 33rd Congressional district seat, I wanted to do what I could to stop him. The power-broker who killed the Subway to the Sea, the leader for the (Un)Affordable Care Act, the Oversight Committee Chairman who pursued steroid abuse in baseball (yet knew nothing of the basic laws regulating the substance) was not going to have an easy election to represent me in Congress.

When I saw his fumbling on the documentary “Bigger, Faster, Stronger”, I resolved that he needed to leave office. An encumbered incumbent all-too-comfy with his seat in the House of Representatives, who took his constituents for granted enough that he could brazenly claim as chairman of the House Energy Committee that he did not know the contents of his Cap and Trade Bill: he needed to go.

I helped out with the Bloomfield campaign as much as I could. I made phone calls and passed out pamphlets, anything to prevent another two years of Waxman. There were a lot of things that I liked about Bill: he pushed for tort reform, he stood up to public sector unions, he donated to charities, and he helped push Prop 32, which would have prevented unions from using their members’ compulsory dues to fund political causes.

I did not like his liberal stance on issues, like Cap and Trade, but I was willing to hold my nose rather than throw up altogether over Henry Waxman.

He was a Republican who became an independent, a move which showed some integrity, but a majority of voters did not support him. Waxman won, but by a mere five points, the lowest in his Congressional career.

In 2013, Waxman and his party are facing an unprecedented tide of recrimination. Obamacare will be in full swing, yet at the same time Obama has been delaying its implementation. So have the voters throughout the country. Those governors who supported the Medicare exchanges are finding that few people are investing in them, while insurance companies are leaving entire states or going out of the health insurance business entirely.